Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to integrating data, and more specifically, techniques for consuming and integrating with representational state transfer (REST) based cloud and enterprise services.
Description of the Related Art
Representational state transfer (REST) is a web design model used by many cloud service providers, enterprises, and social media companies to define interfaces with their services. A cloud service provider may offer scalable computing resources as services over networks, such as provisioning virtual machine instances which can run enterprise applications for customers. Many NoSQL databases and cloud storage service providers use REST to define data integration APIs that may be invoked to extract and load data, among other things.
One approach for integrating with REST services is embodied in the open source RestClient tool, a debugger for RESTful web services, and similar applications, which allow users to make individual REST service calls. However, such applications are not designed for making multiple REST service calls to cloud, enterprise, NoSQL, and/or other REST services, which is often required to implement typical use cases. As used herein, a “use case” defines a sequence of actions that yield an observable result of value, and use cases provide a structure to express functional requirements within the context of business and system processes. For example, one use case may include logging into a NoSQL database, retrieving a number of documents based on document IDs, and retrieving a number of attachments for the documents. In a NoSQL database, stored documents may include documents that encapsulate and encode data using various formats or encodings, such as XML, JSON, URL-encoded, and other documents. Traditional applications such as RESTClient are typically unable to parse and compose such documents. In addition, traditional applications are generally not flexible enough to support the multitude of customizations REST service providers often define in their REST services.